


An Unexpected Kindness

by adreadfulidea



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: 1920's Politics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2019-10-17 14:24:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17562140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: On the night of September 18, 1920, two men left Downton Abbey and the county of Grantham under the cover of darkness.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't remember whether Thomas was staying at the Abbey while he was working at Dr. Clarkson's hospital, but for the purposes of this story we'll say that he was. DA never paid any attention to its own timeline so why should I.

 

 

On the night of September 18, 1920, two men left Downton Abbey and the county of Grantham under the cover of darkness. It was warm and clear and the sky was dotted with stars, if either of them had stopped to notice it. Fall constellations: Andromeda, Aquarius, Pisces. Neither did, as both had other things on their minds. One man was driven to the train station by his sister-in-law, whom he kissed on the cheek before leaving.

“I still think you should have told Papa,” she said, the unsure girl she’d once been making a reappearance.

“Edith,” the man said, in a tired way that was more than tired, that meant the cloud above him would not be lifting anytime soon. “I didn’t want him trying to change my mind.” He lifted a bag with one arm, and held his sleeping daughter close with the other. “Besides,” he said, “Mary knows. If anyone can reconcile him to it, it’ll be her.”

“Well,” she said. “Goodbye. Not for long, I hope.”

“You can drive,” he said. “Come out when I get settled. Bring Mary and Matthew, if you and she can make it that far without killing each other.”

The other man did not get a ride from a sister-in-law to the train station. He left like a thief in the night, everything he owned packed into a single suitcase, and went to a pub in the village where he slipped a man money across the table. The man was a farmer, and a drunk already into the bottle, but beggars can’t be choosers. He sat in the back of the truck as it bounced along the road, unable to bear any company but his own. With a flick of his wrist he sent a half-smoked, still burning cigarette into the grass in the futile and petty hope that he would at least leave a mark for them to remember him by. It sputtered and died in the remnants of that day’s rain shower. He didn’t say goodbye to anyone. He didn’t see the stars.

 

 

Tom Branson slept in his new bedroom in his brother’s flat. He dreamt of his wife, of her reaching out hands, and woke in a panic, feeling that his daughter had been taken from him, that he was losing them both. She was right where he left her, in her bassinet by the bed. Kieran had put together a nursery for her, decorated with yellow-striped wallpaper and with a box he’d made for her toys. Tom couldn’t bear to have her so far from him. The nursery stayed empty for months.

Edith called to check in and so did Mary. Papa was furious, she said, but he would just have to get past it. “He does so hate when anyone makes a decision without consulting him,” she sighed. “I have given up hope of improvement on that front. But he’s all bark and no bite, Tom. Don’t worry.”

But Tom did worry. He expected a knock on the door, a court summons. He expected it right up until he received a package in the mail from Cora, a beautiful blanket embroidered with Sybbie’s name and a china-faced doll, with a letter that ended on _I send my love and Robert does as well_. From Robert Crawley he received nothing at all, not a call or a letter, only silence. The tension in his spine started to unlock.

Tom hired a girl to stay with Sybbie while he was working in the garage. He fed her from a bottle, mixing powders into the milk delivered to the doorstop of the garage each morning. There was a rocking chair sacred to the purpose, one that belonged to their mother which Kieran had dragged all the way from Ireland. It sat by the window, so Tom could look out at what little there was to see: windows of other buildings, telephone wires, a thin sliver of sky. He often wondered if he had made a mistake, taking his daughter from the coddled luxury that could have been her birthright, giving her telephone wires and only a sliver of sky. But Sybil hadn’t wanted that for their girl. She had loved her family. She had also run from them.

Once, when Sybbie pulled them both from sleep with her cries, Kieran wandered out into the tiny kitchen to light the stove and boil water for tea. He sat at the table watching Tom coax Sybbie to take the bottle, for she was fussing, and he shook his head. “Poor thing,” he said. “She wants her mother, that’s what.”

Tom looked up with such distress that his brother immediately apologized, which he hardly ever did. “Jesus, Tommy,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s true,” Tom said. He touched Sybbie’s round cheek. “I can’t be her mother, no matter what kind of father I am.”

Kieran considered this. The kettle started to whistle. “You can throw a punch at me if it’ll make you feel better,” he offered.

Tom worked at the garage and raised his daughter as best he could. He prayed for Sybil every night and wished he believed in ghosts. When the snow started to fall, he bundled Sybbie up in a jumper and a hat and a knit blanket and took her out to watch it. On occasion, when he craved the conversation of adults who were not Kieran, he went to the pub for a beer. But never for long.

It wasn’t a bad life. It just wasn’t the one he’d planned on.

 

 

Thomas Barrow woke before the sun came up, in a room so cold he could see his breath. The stove had gone out again. He pulled the blanket up around his shoulders to try and fight the chill but it was no use; he wasn’t getting back to sleep. He was frozen through. Cursing, he rolled over onto his back and rose from the bed, quilt still wrapped around him, and replenished the coal. He used the match to light both it and his morning cigarette. He decided to heat some water for a bath. The pot was ancient and scored with rust, but it was all he had. This was all he had, now.

He thought about that while the cigarette burned down to embers between his fingers. His problem was that he’d gotten comfortable. He had been treating a building that didn’t belong to him like it could be his home. He had mistaken making valet for security, even though he knew Bates could walk back in the door and take it from him any time he wanted. And he’d trusted O’Brien. He had handed her victory to her willingly. Thomas, of all people, knew who she was. They were the same, he’d believed, or close enough that the differences didn’t matter. He’d been wrong about that, too.

The truth was that Thomas wasn’t like any of them. No amount of livery could cover up what he was. He had only been fooling himself all along, and he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. This time, he promised, he would stay ahead of them. He would be smarter, and faster, and crueler if he had to. This time, he wouldn’t be bothered about making friends. They had never done anything for him. He wasn’t stopping in this cold-water wreck of a flat.

There had to be something he could do. This wasn’t the end, not if he had one damn thing to say about it. It didn’t matter that he was exhausted. It didn’t matter that the hand which held the cigarette shook, that it was scabbed over with blisters from the kind of rough work he wasn’t used to anymore. He only needed to think; he only needed some time, and to _think_. He would save himself. He always did.

His father didn’t teach him much, but there was one lesson he’d never let his son forget. No help was coming. There was no lifeline, no answered prayer. There was only what you were capable of.

Thomas worked at the docks, pulling cargo from ships ten hours a day. He started at the crack of the chilly dawn and worked until evening. Every morning he waited for the ships to dock in a wool coat and his flat cap, standing as far out of the wind as he could manage, his hands crammed in his pockets and his shoulders hunched. The breeze that came off the sea smelled like brine and felt like an ice cube down his back. He had forgotten it was so much colder near the water.

It was a hard job and a long day, but there were benefits. For the first time in years his time was truly his own. No waiting until everyone went to bed to shut the house down. He got weekends off, two days in a row, and he hardly knew what to spend them on. No one dragged him from his bed in the middle of the night on account of an emergency. No one told him where he could go, or what he could say, or who he could spend time with. Privacy, that was what he had. What he’d been missing every minute he spent in service. And sailors, thank god, remained the same as always — so he knew exactly what to do with it.

While he was at Downton it was once a year, maybe twice, that he could seek something out for himself. When the family went to London for the season or to visit friends at Christmas. Occasionally Lord Grantham stayed at his club and brought Thomas along but didn’t have much need of him, which left him free to seek his own pursuits. He would take the train up to the city in a frantic state of excitement, aching to be touched. It hadn’t been enough. Even with Phillip — which seemed now to be another lifetime, that he ever could have been that young or easily taken in — they’d written letters for the most part, and those long reduced to ash. (Thomas had poured his heart out onto paper. He’d kept a dictionary on the desk, the spine cracked from so much usage, terrified of sounding thick or common or anything that could have scared Phillip off. Twenty-two and in love, he’d wanted to be perfect.) They had not been able to see each other often. There had been no excuse.

He didn’t need one any longer.

And he knew not to make it personal, not like he had before. When he turned his mouth away from a kiss directed at him by his latest, a Scot who’d come in from Barbados on a ship heavy with tobacco, the man only laughed and pressed his lips to the side of Thomas’ neck instead. “Aye, your highness,” he said, “if you insist.” He unbuttoned his trousers and slipped a beautifully rough hand inside. Thomas closed his eyes. Once, he would have refused to do this without being kissed first. Funny how things could change.

He couldn’t imagine writing a love letter ever again.

 

 

Tom ducked his head and tried to keep his elbows in, but he got jostled all the same and spilled beer over his arm. It was that kind of night, and that kind of crowd. Too close to Christmas, everyone bursting with noise and cheer that was nearly offensive to him this year. He found himself watching their laughing mouths in envy, a kind of black jealousy welling up in him that he didn’t recognize. He should be at home, except that Kieran had all but thrown him out of the flat, sick of watching him pace around the place. “I’ll watch her,” he’d said, “go somewhere before you wear a hole through my floor.” But Tom couldn’t escape himself or the thoughts that had been sending him in circles: what their first Christmas together as a family should have been like, had Sybil lived; and the pale copy he was trying to make of it. And now he couldn’t escape the crowd either, which seemed to be pressing against him from all sides.

He made his way back to the bar and deposited his drink there, having no taste for it anyway. “Excuse me,” he said to the bartender, raising his voice to be heard over the din. “Can I borrow a towel? I’ve spilled —”

“Here ya go, Paddy,” the man said, slapping it down on the counter and returning to his work.

Tom felt a flush of anger creeping across his skin. He swallowed the bitterness down and picked the towel up. A quick glance around confirmed that no one else had noticed, or cared; and why would they have. It didn’t matter to them.

There were times when he longed for a more reckless version of himself, the one who’d watched a house burn in the middle of the night and done nothing to stop it, who hadn’t wanted to stop it. But look where that had gotten him. So he didn’t start a fight, or finish one. He took the towel and he walked to the end of the crowded room where there were booths and tables, none empty. One was occupied by a single man who had his back turned against the cacophony and Tom didn’t acknowledge him either, not until he sat down and finished mopping himself off and looked up, across the table, into Thomas Barrow’s face.

He was struck dumb for a moment. It was the surprise of seeing someone in a place they had no reason to be. “Why are you here?” he asked, only realizing how aggressive it sounded once the question was firmly in the air. As though he needed Tom’s permission to be in Liverpool. He might have family, a sick mother, a brother he was visiting. Or this was his idea of a holiday. Tom didn’t know him well enough to guess.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Thomas said, in a familiar cool way. He had always been a chilly, distant kind of man — except for the times a blistering mood gripped him, and he spent the day making sure everyone knew it. Tom had never enjoyed his company. He hadn’t understood Sybil’s fondness for him. “Are the rest of the them with you?”

“The rest of who?”

“The Crawleys,” Thomas said. “Surely they must be here somewhere. They travel in packs. Slumming it for Christmas, perhaps.”

“I’ve got no idea what you mean,” Tom said, baffled. “Wouldn’t you know better than I do? You’re the valet.”

Thomas, as always, had been smoking. With a short and angry gesture he stubbed the cigarette out and pushed the ashtray away from him. “You bloody well know I’m not,” he said. “What are you playing at?”

Tom’s eyebrows began to climb up his forehead. He was experiencing the sensation of having walked into the conversation in the middle. “I —” he started, but never got to finish, as Thomas was on a tear and seemed determined to get to the end of it no matter what.

“I suppose this is funny to you,” he said. “It’s not bad enough that I’m breaking my back down at fucking Albert dock every day, that everything I worked for is gone. You need to stop by for a laugh at the degenerate. I left, didn’t I? Isn’t that enough? I won’t pollute your precious Abbey any longer.”

“ _My_ Abbey,” said Tom. “What the hell have I got to do with it? I haven’t seen the inside of it in months, not since I came here.”

“But you,” Thomas said. His face had taken on an ashen colour, and Tom still didn’t understand why. “You were going to be the estate manager. Everyone said so.”

“I’m not,” Tom said. “I wasn’t. They said I could, but — I didn’t want to be. I don’t know anything about it. Why would I stay there without her?”

“So you didn’t know,” Thomas said. “You didn’t know about any of it, and now I’ve gone and —” he shook his head, and what followed was a strangely terrible and brittle silence, one that Tom broke by saying the worst thing under the circumstances that he could have.

“Why did you call yourself a degenerate?” he asked. “What did you do?”

Thomas stood up, whatever mask he wore shuttering back into place. He gathered his coat and threw money on the table. He’d barely touched his meal. “Nothing,” he said. “I’ve made a mistake, that’s all, then and now. I won’t discuss it with you.”

“Wasn’t asking you to,” said Tom. “You don’t have to leave.”

Thomas put his hat on. He wasn’t looking at Tom, and didn’t again before he left. “Yes,” he said. “I do. I _always_ do.”

Tom watched him go, his heart beating strangely. Why was he so upset? They had never been friends, and Thomas being prickly was nothing new. Yet Tom couldn’t shake the feeling that he had trespassed somehow. Of course, by the time he went to bed that night he had figured it out. He only needed a minute, away from the chaos of the pub, and to remember something Sybil said to him once.

It had been during the war, when she was nursing. She’d skipped a dinner she was supposed to attend, and Tom found her sitting outside on one of the benches that dotted the property. He’d brought her a plate from the servant’s hall. She was in her uniform and Tom thought she looked magnificent and strong. One of her patients had died, she told him. Took a razor to himself.

“That’s awful,” he said, and sat next to her on the bench, the way he wouldn’t have dared to if anyone else had been around. But it was only the two of them, so he took what little freedoms he could. “No wonder you didn’t want to eat.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, picking at a dinner roll. “I’m worried about Lance Sergeant Barrow.”

“You don’t have to call him that,” Tom said. “He’s only an acting Lance Sergeant.”

Sybil smiled a little. “I don’t mind,” she said. “Besides, he’s earned it. He’s very helpful, you know, at the hospital. He’s so much more sincere than you think.”

Tom doubted it, and he’d also felt childishly put out at the fond way Sybil spoke. Maybe he wasn’t the only servant in the house to have caught her eye, he thought. If he even had, and wasn’t just tricking himself. “What is it that has you worried?” he asked, and tried not to look as if he was invested in the answer. “He’s grieved about the patient, too? Were they friends?”

There was a pause. “Yes,” said Sybil. “I think so. And he was the one to point out that the poor man wasn’t well enough to be moved. Dr. Clarkson was going to transfer him, you see. And to have to live with being right about such a terrible thing — it’s not going to easy. I feel very badly for him. And there’s nothing I can do. I’m sure he’d never talk to a woman about it.” She swiveled towards Tom, her eyes bright. “But you aren’t a woman, are you?”

“Not last I checked,” he said. “Now hold on. Why would he want to talk to me? We’ve never talked about anything but the weather or the newspaper.”

“Just be a listening ear,” Sybil said, eagerly. “Bring him something to eat, like you did for me. He’s hiding in his room, O’Brien told me. I hate to think of him all alone right now.”

“This is mad,” he told her. “They must have been pretty friendly for you to be this concerned. Were they at war together?”

“We all are,” she said. “Even you, though you don’t want to admit it.”

So he’d done as she’d asked, _because_ she’d asked, and he’d taken no real pleasure in the task. He didn’t think Sybil was right about any of it; that Thomas was particularly mourning this man or that Tom could help him if he was. He’d expected to be snapped at, a _bugger off_ and a slammed door, and waited awkwardly outside the room for it to happen, Mrs. Patmore’s roast going cold in his hands. He’d knocked and even tested the knob. It was locked.

In the end his expectations were thwarted. The door never opened at all. He left the plate on the floor in front of it, and one of the hall boys took it away the next morning.

 

 

So it was all very clear in retrospect. What wasn’t clear was what Tom should be doing now, or how he could stop himself from dwelling on it. Certainly he already had enough on his mind. But the unfairness of it rankled, and Tom had never been able to let unfairness go. There were times — not many, but they existed — when his understanding of a person shifted all at once. It had happened with Sybil, at the rally, when he saw for the first time how unafraid she was of the world that so disturbed those of her class. And it was happening again, with Thomas. It wasn’t that knowing he might have had a lover during the war or after it made him a different man. It was that even Tom could see how lonely it must have been, having to hide his true nature. How terrifying the possibility of discovery must be. And then to have it happen. The weight would warp any personality.

Sybil, with her sensitive heart, had discovered the truth. She’d tried to tell him, too, and maybe he would have seen it if he’d been less preoccupied with his own concerns. I’m sorry, love, he thought, because it was the only way he could talk to her anymore. You were right as usual.

He knew the loneliness of grief all too well, and it stung to think he’d left someone else alone with it. It felt like unfinished business.

If there was nothing he could do about the grief, his or anyone’s else’s, he could at least fix his latest blunder. There was no reason for Thomas to think he had to leave Liverpool like he’d left Downton. Tom would go to him, he decided. He’d tell him his secret was safe, and so it would turn out all right. He would just need to find him first.

He went down to the docks, begging a morning off from the garage, and he found the dockers and asked around. Most didn’t know him, or didn’t know anything about him if they did. Certainly not where he could be found, and it was clear that Tom needed an address, because Thomas hadn’t come to work that morning.

At a loss, Tom stopped and looked out at the fog over the water. It was warming up but the wind was still brisk, bringing the blood to his cheeks even when turned his collar up against it. So this was to be it, then. He had tried, and he had failed. He couldn’t say he wasn’t tired of failing. He would have left for home, except he gradually became aware that he was being watched.

Tom glanced at the man out of the corner of his eye, trying to take his measure. He was a tall sort, wrapped in a heavy wool coat and smoking a pipe. Handsome underneath all the stubble. “You looking for Thomas Barrow?” he asked, his accent straight from the Highlands.

“Yes,” said Tom. He went over straight away, trying not to look suspiciously eager. “Do you know him?”

“Some,” said the man. “What’d you want him for?”

Tom drew in a slow breath and tried to come up with an explanation while he did it. “This is embarrassing,” he said, “but I owe him money.” The man gave him a piercing look, saying nothing at all, so Tom kept going. “It’s very important to me that I pay my debts,” he said.

He got a slow, amused smile for that. “Bet it is,” he said. “You know where he lives?”

“Do you?” Tom asked.

He gave over the address without any trouble. He also told Tom he wasn’t as good a liar as he thought he was, whatever that was supposed to mean.

And so he stood under Thomas Barrow’s window, trying to see if he was inside. He had tried the doorbell for the terrace itself but to no one’s surprise it was broken. Tom picked up a pebble and threw it at the window, where it connected with a clatter. He did it twice before he got a response. A man’s silhouette appeared behind the glass, which was too dirty and scratched for him to discern who it was. It could have been Thomas. He did have dark hair, and moved out of view quickly.

So Tom threw another pebble.

One conversation. That was all he needed, and then they never had to see each other again.

 

 

Thomas had been packing when the rapping at the window started up. Or he was supposed to be packing. He would go south, he had decided, and get out of the north entirely. He had enough money for a ticket, though not much else. He would pick up a job, somewhere, anywhere. Like he had here. There had to be work for an able-bodied man. There had to be. Even one with no history.

And if that didn’t work, there was still the possibility of India. He could leave the whole rotten country behind him and his stained reputation with it. Maybe that was the answer. A true fresh start.

There _was_ an answer. He wouldn’t let himself believe anything else.

He’d smoked half his pack but hadn’t opened his suitcase. No breakfast, either, so now he felt sick and dizzy, like the first time he ever lit up. There had been a classmate at school he wanted to pay attention to him and he used to smoke with his friends out back of the chapel. Thomas didn’t make any headway with the boy but he did pick up a habit. He could remember the texture of those mornings so vividly — huddled together for warmth hiding from the rain, the whole lot of them laughing and trading the kinds of lies that boys invented to make themselves seem more impressive.

That year was the last of his innocence, old enough to know what he wanted but too young to do anything about it. And then Neil told everyone that Thomas was making eyes at him and he had to spend the rest of the term hiding from them. They caught him out anyway, one day on the way home. When his Dad saw the bruises he hadn’t asked for their source. He had only told him to hit back next time. Thomas wondered what the old man would think of it if he took that advice to heart at home as well as abroad, and he’d thanked God on his knees that night that it hadn’t been worse, that the rumours hadn’t reached their neighborhood where his sharp and terrible ears could pick them up. He was twelve years old, and he was still grateful for small favours. That would pass soon enough.

The first tap at the window he disregarded. The second had him on his feet, venturing tentatively forward. If someone was trying to throw a rock through…

But no one was. It was only Tom Branson, for some reason Thomas couldn’t fathom, standing outside of his building and making a racket. He stared for a long, confused moment. And then he sat back down on his bed. Maybe he would go away if ignored. Maybe he had the wrong address. Maybe he’d lost his mind. Either way it was none of Thomas’ concern.

Another tap. It was a pebble, he realized. The daft tosser was throwing pebbles at his window. It was staggeringly immature. It also made Thomas consider opening the window up just to throw something right back.

“Christ’s sake,” he muttered, when another one hit. He was going to be at it all day, then. When Thomas returned to the window — angling his body so that he hopefully could not be seen — Tom spotted him all the same, and started jumping up and down, waving both arms.

“Fine,” Thomas said. “Fine.” He wrenched the window up, putting a splinter in his finger in the process. “ _What_ ,” he called out.

“I just want to talk,” Tom said.

“Not in the street, we won’t,” Thomas snapped.

“I didn’t mean in the streets. Can I come up?”

“Yes,” Thomas said, because there was nothing else to say. He said it with clenched teeth, not sure that Tom could hear him down where he was. But it was the only way to get rid of him. Left to his own devices, he would be out there all day. He looked perfectly capable of it, like a cat determined to sit on a fence and yowl past midnight. Screaming at him to leave would only draw the attention and the ire of the neighbours, neither of which Thomas wanted.

So he went down, and collected Tom Branson, and led him back up to the flat. “That door doesn’t lock right,” he told him. “You probably could have walked right into the building.”

“I’m not a burglar,” Tom said. “I don’t go around checking doorknobs.” He was irritatingly amiable, but he would be: he’d won, and Thomas would have to humor him.

Thomas didn’t like losing. It put him off balance. “You go around making a nuisance of yourself,” he said. “Showing up at other people’s homes where you weren’t invited. How did you know where I lived?”

“Ah, I’m sorry about that,” said Tom, with the same good cheer as before. “You said you were working at the docks, so I looked for you there, and asked about when you weren’t. And the rocks — did you know the doorbell is broken?”

“Yes, Tom,” Thomas said. He sat down on the bed, leaving the single chair in the room free. Never let it be said that he had no manners. “A lot of things in this building are broken.” The only men he’d had back here were the ones he’d been sleeping with, but he refused to let the embarrassment show on his face. Tom wouldn’t know the difference, anyway. Probably thought the snitch, whoever it had been, was somebody he’d hosted at a weekly poker night.

“Is it money that you want?” he asked.

“No,” Tom said, and for the first time he looked shocked. “No, not money. I don’t want anything.”

Didn’t want anything. As though Thomas was going to believe that. “Then say your piece,” he told him. He had better things to do; packing, getting to the station, fleeing yet another life.

Tom pulled the chair over, the legs squeaking fearfully against the floor. He sat awkwardly under Thomas’ stare, and for the first time appeared to be feeling the absurdity of the situation. “Look,” he said, his hands on his knees, leaning forward earnestly. “I don’t mean to interrupt your life. That’s the last thing I would want to do. I’m only here to tell you — to tell you that I won’t. I won’t tell anyone. About you.”

“How magnanimous,” Thomas said.

Tom sighed. “I never knew about it,” he said. “No one from Downton is feeding me gossip, and I wasn’t laughing at you. I don’t think it’s funny, your —” He looked to be struggling to find a word, so Thomas provided one for him.

“My condition?” he asked, as much acid in his voice as he could muster.

“I was going to say existence.”

“So which do you think it is?” Thomas asked. “My _existence_? Criminal or medical? It used to be that we should be jailed, but now some think we ought to be locked up somewhere else, a padded room instead of a brick cell. I’m curious as to which side you fall on.”

“Jesus,” said Tom, “ _neither_. You don’t have much practice accepting apologies, do you?”

“Wouldn’t know,” said Thomas. “I’ve never gotten one. Is that was this is supposed to be?”

“Yes,” said Tom. “Or something like. You were going to leg it out of here because of me, is it so bad that I’m trying to stop you?”

“How do you know that I’m going anywhere?” Thomas snapped, completely losing his temper and also control of himself. “You don’t know a damn thing about me, none of you ever did!”

“Because there’s a suitcase sitting on your bed, you great arse!” Tom said. “Because you quit your job! Why is it you lot think I’m so bloody stupid? I can do more than drive a car, you know. I used to be a journalist.”

“You lot?”

“Never mind,” Tom said. He crossed his arms, and that was when Thomas noticed for the first time how tired he looked. He was a sturdy man with a round, young face, but there was a hollowed-out quality to him now that hadn’t been there before Lady Sibyl’s death. In the days after he had been like a ghost, drifting from room to room, silent and staring. And they hadn’t said anything to him, either; no one had known how to. Or if they should. They never would have dared with the family. But Tom wasn’t family, and he wasn’t staff, and he must have known that, if he’d left.

Thomas hated that he’d noticed it all. What good was feeling sorry for anyone else going to do for him? It wasn’t as if the favor would ever be returned.

“We aren’t enemies, Thomas,” Tom said, “and you might have trusted me that much at least.”

“I trust self-interest,” Thomas said. “I trust the motive behind it all. So tell me what yours is. Just tell me what you want, and we can get on with it. Please.” He bit down on his own tongue at the last, at please. Never beg for anything. Never let anyone know how badly you want _anything_ , he told himself. He had been telling himself. It was a rule he couldn’t stick to, no matter how he tried.

“I don’t want anything,” Tom said, again. “I already told you.”

Thomas crossed the room to get his wallet from the pocket of his coat. He took two pounds from it.

“Here,” he said, holding them out. “It’s all I can spare.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Don’t be tiresome,” Thomas said. “Take it. For my peace of mind if nothing else. Then we’re even.”

“You want even?” Tom said, mutinous. “I can give you even.”

Thomas didn’t understand. That was what he was _offering_. Just take it, he thought. Just take the fucking money. Why did people have to play the innocent? Money was money. There was no reason for him to refuse it, except some cock-eyed idea he had about honor and accepting bribes, and oh, who knew what else. Thomas didn’t want his pity. They all thought it was such a gift, didn’t they, the barest tolerance. As though he’d ever asked for it. He would have rathered Tom hit him square in the face.

“You want to know why I left Ireland?” Tom asked.

“I don’t care.”

“Because I was going to be charged with arson,” Tom said. “And sedition against the Crown, in all likelihood. So who’s the criminal now?”

Thomas stared at him. For once he was speechless. “You are truly cracked,” he said, finally. “Why would you tell anyone that? Why would you tell _me_?”

“Because now we’re even,” Tom said. “I know something about you. And you know something about me.”

Thomas floundered. He remembered he was still holding the money, and slipped it into his trouser pocket. He patted his chest, searching for his pack, only to find he’d left it on the windowsill. And he sat heavily down on the edge of his bed.

“You stupid tosser,” he said.

Tom blinked. “What?”

“You have a daughter,” Thomas said. “I could run to the law right now and you’d never see her again. You’d be lucky not to end up like Roger Casement.”

“They killed Casement as much because he was like you as because he was like me,” said Tom, “and you must know it. And I wasn’t consorting with the Germans, by the way. It was one house.”

He did know it. He was surprised that Tom did, or that he would admit it. “Must’ve been a big house,” Thomas said. “Anyone I’d know?”

“No,” said Tom, sharply.

“Only asking.” It wasn’t as if he couldn’t sympathize. He would have cheerfully burned Downton down to rubble, and briefly he lost himself pleasantly in imagining exactly that. “Still bloody stupid, though, running about telling people.”

“I’m not telling people. I told _you_. Are you going to inform on me?”

“I might have done. You don’t know.”

“I do know,” said Tom. “Not exactly a friend of the government, are you? And you value yourself too highly to court self destruction, Thomas. Any idiot could see that. You,” he said, decisively, “are only angry because I called your bluff. God forbid anyone have power over you, even for a second.”

It was too close to home, and too accurate; he wouldn’t have put Tom down as being a particularly observant sort. But perhaps Thomas hadn’t ever hid his secrets and his weaknesses as well as he thought he did.

“Why should they?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t we be our own masters? I wouldn’t expect you to think any different, not if you’re setting estates on fire to prove it.”

“I didn’t exactly set the fire,” he said. “I — you know what, it doesn't matter. I’ve made my point. Have we reached an agreement? You keep quiet and I’ll do the same.”

Thomas let him wait a minute before speaking. “Is that we’re to be, then? A couple of cannons pointed at each other, ready to fire.”

“If you want,” Tom said. “But does it have to be so violent?”

“Says the arsonist.”

“Wipe that smirk off your face.”

“Sorry,” said Thomas, insincerely, for he was rarely sorry for anything. He was feeling better, so much so that he found his flask inside his suitcase and offered Tom a drink. He had carried it with him since the war. Standard army issue, now filled with cheap scotch that one of his visitors left behind. He had planned to drink it on the train. He had thought he would need to. The crisis averted, he could almost admit that his nerves had gone ragged. But he was fine. He would always be fine, he thought, and if he told himself so often enough he would surely begin to believe it, to know it in his bones the way men who never had to worry did.

Now he poured the liquor into a chipped teacup and passed it over. Tom tossed his share back and made a face. “Will you leave?” he asked.

“No,” Thomas said. “There’s no reason to now. You won’t tell the Crawleys you saw me, will you?”

“Of course not,” Tom said. “Do you need a job?”

Would he have tried to find him one, if Thomas said yes? He almost wanted to lie and see how far he could go with it. Could get him off the docks. But he had pushed his luck far enough lately. It was the rare time that honesty was the best policy, but here they were. “I sent word down that I was sick. I didn’t quit.”

“Smart of you.”

“I know.” Thomas beckoned for the cup back, ignoring Tom’s eyeroll as he gave it over. He had two cups, which was one too many on an empty stomach. He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them Tom was laughing at him. Or not laughing. Smiling, which was worse.

“A little too much for you?” he asked.

“Oh, go away,” said Thomas. “I haven’t eaten.”

“Maybe you ought to lie down.”

“I’ll do what I like,” Thomas said, and Tom _did_ laugh, and it was terrible somehow, though Thomas could not at that moment have said why. It made him look boyish and appealing.

“Contrary as the devil,” Tom said, shaking his head, and stood up from the chair. “I suppose you’ll be alright here, on your own? Not that there’s much cause to worry about you.”

Thomas almost let loose with a sarcastic retort, but he couldn’t seem to think of one. “Yes,” he said instead, and ran a thumb around the edge of the teacup. What a day. His head was spinning for more reason than one. He did need to lie down, in all honesty. And then venture out for fish and chips, or make oatmeal if he trusted himself to deal with the stove.

“Don’t drink the rest of that bottle.”

“I’ll —”

“I know,” said Tom. “You’ll do what you like.”

 

 

The pub was as crowded as it had been last time, though tonight Tom managed to find a table for himself. He almost wished he hadn’t. It would have been an excuse to go home. But Sybbie was asleep and Kieran was watching her. She was starting to sleep through the night now, starting to make babbling noises and was showing an interest in anything bright or shiny. The day before she had rolled over on her own. And he kept wanting to tell Sybil, was the thing. It was ridiculous. He knew she was gone. Every minute he knew it. But the mechanism of the memory was still there, as firm and deep as an old scar, the urge to talk to her about anything that happened during the day. He wondered if it would ever fade, and if it would feel better or worse if it did.

He hadn’t known how grief could split a person in two. It was like he was living in two realities: the one he had and the one he wanted. For the first time in his life he felt absolutely alone.

A man could go mad from thoughts like he was having. So went out and he tried to talk to other people and to get out of his own head. But god, he had never wanted to less, or been so bad at it. He used make new friends easily. Maybe that would be relegated to the _before_ , as well, as so much had been.

He was so lost in his own distraction that it didn’t register that he was being approached, not until the chair across from him was being pulled back from the table. When he looked up, he somehow wasn’t surprised to see that it was Thomas.

“Do you mind if I sit?” he asked.

“I’d like you to,” said Tom, and all he wanted from the offer was a little bit of company, a better ending to the night than he’d had a beginning. He was going to get a lot more than that. The wheels of fate had started to turn again. He just didn’t know it yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes on this chapter: the "sixty thousand in the streets" line is a reference to the 1911 general transport strike, which involved dockers, railway workers and sailors as well as those standing in solidarity with them. It largely shut Liverpool down for that summer and resulted in attacks by the police and the deaths of two strikers, John Sucliffe and Michael Prendergast, after Winston Churchill sent in the troops because Winston Churchill was an asshole. There was real fear among the powers-that-be that a revolution was beginning, and open panic in the Conservative-owned newspapers. 
> 
> Jeannie Mole and Mary "Ma" Bamber were union leaders and activists; Bamber also ran successfully for the Labour Party. Ma Bamber attempted to get the bag makers of Liverpool -- the women who made all the sacks that products coming out of the port were inside -- to organize. It is unclear whether they ever did, but for the purposes of this story we're going to say yes.

 

 

 

Thomas took his hat off and placed it on the table. The way he moved was so smooth it always seemed planned, but Tom couldn’t stop thinking about the man he’d seen pacing his room, getting sloppily drunk, his face in his hands. There was no trace of him today.

“You don’t look hungover,” he said.

Thomas laughed, so quietly that Tom almost didn’t hear it. It sounded surprised. “No,” he said. “Not very.”

“Lucky you,” Tom said. “Or did you stop after I left?”

“I decided to keep the rest of it for a special occasion.” Thomas took his pack out and tapped out a cigarette. He offered it to Tom, who shook his head.

“My grandmother thought it was a filthy habit,” he said.

“Afraid of granny, were you?”

“ _Everyone_ was,” said Tom. “Didn’t you have a relative like that? I thought every family did.”

“There weren’t many of us,” said Thomas, which didn’t exactly answer the question. “How’s the baby?”

Tom smiled. “She’s beautiful,” he said. “Six months old soon. I can’t believe it’s been so long.” She was thriving, really, plump and healthy. He had been worried that being denied Sybil’s care would hurt her somehow, that she’d be sick or frail. But he couldn’t say that to Thomas. “She’s doing very well,” he said.

“I imagined she would be,” Thomas said. “She’ll be fine as long as she’s with you. You’re not the type to give over her care to someone else.”

Tom made a face. Even the idea of it —

“Who would?” he asked, disgust colouring his tone. “After everything that happened?” He still couldn’t refer to Sybil’s death directly. He talked around it, flinched at all the well-meaning platitudes but couldn’t confront the ugly fact of it out loud. Maybe it was cowardice. He was going to have to tell Sybbie about her mother one day, and he didn’t know if he could. “I can’t picture being _without_ her. She’s all I have left.”

Most people, he noticed, didn’t know how to react when he got like this. It wasn’t cruelty. He never blamed them. They just didn’t understand this kind of grief. They tried to make it better.

Thomas didn’t. He looked Tom over with those pale eyes of his, his face still as stopped water. “Other men have when they lost their wives. It’s how my father grew up, in an orphanage.”

“I’d kill anyone who tried to take her from me.”

“Or burn down a house.”

Tom’s mouth twitched. He tried to prevent the laugh he could feel building from coming out but he couldn’t, he didn’t want to — it was the first time he’d laughed that way in god knew how long, and didn’t it feel _good_. “You’re a right arshole, you know that?”

“I rarely hear anything else of myself,” he said. And then, after an amused pause. “So how have _you_ been doing?”

Tom hadn’t been expecting the question because it didn’t seem like something Thomas would ask or care about. He guessed it wasn’t, not usually, except that whatever had passed between them changed his mind. So he asked. Out of a decency that Tom wouldn’t have believed he had.

He appreciated the gesture. He did.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Are you sure you don’t want a cigarette?” Thomas asked.

“Does it help?”

“Not really.”

“Have you got any plans for Christmas?” Tom asked, to steer the conversation back towards neutral territory. Not that it was for him. But he was tired of thinking about his life, about the gap where Sybil should be. A holiday without her was no different than any _other_ day without her. Grief was terrible, yes. It was also grey and dull and exhausting.

“Not at the moment,” Thomas said. Which meant no, since it was coming in only a few days. But leave it to him to give a politician’s answer. “I assume you’ll be taking Miss Sybbie to her first midnight mass.”

“No,” said Tom. “It’s too late, she needs to be in bed. I’ll bring her when she’s old enough to understand what it is. I’m going, though. I’ll just be doing it alone.”

“Your brother isn’t going?”

“My brother hasn’t gone to church since he was sixteen years old and got big enough that no one could make him. So you have that in common.”

Thomas frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Well, you weren’t exactly churchgoing at Downton,” Tom said. “If I remember correctly you used to sit in that rocker of yours and read Jules Verne while everyone else was at services.” It was the closest they’d ever got to talking to each other in those days, exchanging pleasantries over a morning cuppa when everyone else was away. Family and servant alike.

“I’m not an atheist,” said Thomas. “I’m Catholic, same as you. Or I was once upon a time.”

Tom stared at him. “You are _not_ ,” he said.

“Yes, I am,” Thomas said. “What’s so unbelievable about that? We do have Catholics in England, you know.”

“The why didn’t you bloody say something?” Tom asked. “We could have presented a united front.”

“Against _what_?”

Tom shrugged. “Protestants,” he said.

“English Catholics don’t do that,” Thomas said, flatly.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Tom asked.

There was a pause in which he could see Thomas struggling not to ask him if he’d gone mad again. “To church,” he said, finally.

“Not just to church,” Tom said, eagerly, because now that he’d had the idea he liked it. Yes, he did — why should anyone else be as alone as he felt? At least he had his brother and his child. What did Thomas have, but sitting alone in that miserable flat. “Come for Christmas supper. It’ll only be me and Kieran and Sybbie, we’ll have no problem filling another plate.”

“I’m not going to church.”

“Supper, then,” Tom said. “Come see the baby. I’m sure she remembers you.”

“She absolutely does not.”

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a — you must be the most persistent man I’ve ever met.”

“Is that a yes?”

“I almost don’t want to give you the satisfaction,” Thomas said. “But yes, I’ll come.”

Tom settled back in his chair, and he was indeed satisfied. You don’t have to be so stubborn, he wanted to tell him. You don’t have to be so afraid. I’m not going to do anything to hurt you. “It won’t be so bad,” he said. “You’ve already been exposed to Kieran. And I can get to church on my own.”

“Thank god for that,” Thomas muttered.

 

 

“You didn’t seem to be such great friends before,” Kieran said over the top of his newspaper the next morning.

“We aren’t,” Tom said, irritation rolling through him like thunder. There were days when he swore Kieran was compelled to question everything he did, not matter what it was. He always had some advice to give that no one had asked for. And people said Tom was sanctimonious. “Must we be, to invite him for Christmas?”

“He doesn’t have family?”

“Not everyone has our army of aunts and cousins and uncles to choose from.” Tom tried to feed Sybbie a spoonful of her cereal, who spit it all over herself because it was going to be that sort of morning.

“Aunts,” said Kieran. “I meant his parents, a brother or a sister. Do they live?”

“No idea,” Tom said. “I’ve never asked.” On the rare occasions Thomas mentioned his family at all, he always spoke in past tense. Of course, that didn’t mean they were dead. But Tom couldn’t tell his brother why they might be estranged. He held his tongue and let Kieran assume whatever he wanted.

“You don’t know?”

“I’m not interrogating him, am I? It was an invitation to a meal, not an identity parade.”

“You could have asked first.”

Because it was his flat, he meant. His flat and his garage. But he wasn’t the only one who put food on the table. “Do we turn people away from our table, now?”

“Christ,” groaned Kieran. “You always have to make everything sound so dire, don’t you? He won’t starve to death.”

Tom lifted Sybbie out of her chair and mopped her face with a handkerchief. She squealed and pulled the corner of it into her mouth. He kissed her on the top of the head. “I thought it would be nice,” he said. “No one should have to spend Christmas alone.”

“Well now that you put it like that I can’t say no,” Kieran said. “But let me tell you: I’m not doing the cooking.”

Tom didn’t bother with a roast goose, and made rack of lamb instead. He answered the door with the baby in his arms. He hadn’t been sure that Thomas would actually come, but there he was on the doorstep, looking well as ever and more than a little awkward. “Come in,” Tom said, standing back, while his brother craned his neck to get a look from the kitchen. For all his complaints, he’d offered to make the potatoes.

“I didn’t bring anything,” Thomas said.

“You didn’t need to,” said Tom. “But if you could hold her for a minute I’d be grateful.”

“Oh,” said Thomas, and did. He was surprisingly natural with her, and by the time Tom got the lamb out of the oven he was sitting on the floor playing with her. She was having a grand time, her cheeks pink and her laugh like a ringing bell. She had a big laugh, his girl, bigger than his or Sybil’s had ever been. Sometimes she laughed so hard she fell over. Tom couldn’t stop looking at them.

“I told you she would remember you,” he said.

They sat out on the stairs outside after to get a breath of fresh air and escape from the warmth of the small flat. It had all gone well enough. Kieran and Thomas had talked about football. Tom put Sybbie down for the night once the meal was over; she’d been yawning by the end of it and dropped off right away.

It was a cool night, but there was no rain. No snow. Just a clear sky above them.

“Where would you go if you could leave here?” Tom wondered aloud. Thomas slid a sideways look at him. To his surprise, he answered the question.

“It used to be Paris,” Thomas said. “I had some romantic notion of it, I suppose. But after the war I never wanted to see France again. You?”

“Aside from back to Ireland? I’ve been thinking Boston, when I’ve saved up enough money.”

“Making plans?”

“Maybe,” said Tom. “I don’t want to be living with my brother when I’m fifty.”

“You’ll be married again,” Thomas said. “And have five more children.”

Tom watched the sky, his chest tight. He felt as if he was looking for a familiar face that he knew wasn’t going to be there. “No,” he said, quietly. “I don’t think so.”

They sat in silence for a few seconds more. It was Thomas who broke it. “She was the only one of them worth a damn.”

Tom swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. His eyes were stinging, and not from the wind or the cold. “Thank you,” he said, his voice rough. He glanced at Thomas’ sharp profile and then away. In the flat, Kieran’s shadow crossed by the window. He had to go back in, get a start at cleaning up the mess or he would regret it tomorrow. But not yet.

“Happy Christmas, Tom,” Thomas said to him, when he left. Tom was standing up, leaning against the railing of the stairs. He raised a hand to say goodbye.

“Yes,” he said, in return. “Happy Christmas, Thomas.” The cold was beginning to seep through his jumper. Tom stayed where he was and watched him retreat down the street for much longer than he’d meant to.

 

 

Thomas hadn’t taken much with him from Downton. He’d never _had_ much: his clothes, some books, whatever he could fit into a suitcase and move quickly if need be. No photographs of his family. After Phillip he’d gotten out of the habit of writing letters, at least if they contained anything personal. He couldn’t indulge in sentimentality. He’d always thought that when he got a home of his own it would change. He’d looked forward to it; after of a lifetime of having no control over his surroundings he would fix everything just the way he wanted it, exactly the way he’d dreamt of on nights spent sleeping rough or in narrow bleak rooms that didn’t belong to him.

That day had never arrived, and old habits were hard to break. He might have done the flat up a bit, bought furniture that didn’t come with the room, put up a picture or two. But it seemed a wasted effort. It was temporary, like all the rest of his life had been.

So no pictures on the walls, and only what he could carry in a suitcase, and no sentimental heirlooms — except or one. If you could call it that.

His granddad’s watch. The only thing he left his son when he abandoned him.

It was a beautiful piece, a gold plated Arnold & Son engraved with a ship on the back though as far as Thomas knew the old man had never been on the ocean. It was also broken, and had been as long as Thomas could remember. He’d nicked it the night his father threw him out, with the intentions of pawning it or selling it as soon as he could. Turned out no one wanted a broken watch, gold or no.

He’d started trying to fix it a few years ago. His father had never been able to, and maybe he wanted to prove to himself that he was better than him, after all, that if he’d had the chance he could have made something of the failing family business. He’d grown up in a flat strewn with dials and wheels and escapements. He’d cut his teeth on it.

But he couldn’t fix this. The bloody thing was cursed. Visibly, it was fine — it just wouldn’t work. Still, he kept trying. Thomas was never someone to give up easily. He bent over his work, tongue between his teeth, while the light faded to dark.

 

 

Thomas was eating his lunch when they approached. They were union men, he knew, though there ended the extent of his familiarity with either of them. A gnarled old docker with hands that looked like knotted wood and a wet-behind the ears redhead so young he was still getting spots. Thomas couldn’t think what they’d want with him. He kept chewing, his cheek bulging with pork pie, and watched them to see if they were going make trouble.

They seemed to be waiting for him to finish. “What?” he asked, after he swallowed.

“M’ grandson wants to talk to you,” the old man said, and then nudged the boy. “Go on,” he said. “It was your idea.”

“G-god,” the boy muttered, a plea for his help perhaps. He had a stammer so thick he tripped over every second syllable but he soldiered forth. “We w-w-wanted to ask i-if you h-had cons-i-i-dered j-joining t-the Nat-nat-na,” he closed his eyes briefly. It was terrible to watch him struggle. “Fuck,” he said, clear as a bell, and then: “the _union_.”

“What for?” Thomas asked.

The man and the boy looked at each other. “Why not?” the old fellow said. “Unless you’re just passing through, as some are. We may have stumbled some in recent years, but only ten years ago there were sixty thousand in the streets. You must remember, you’re old enough.”

He did remember. He remembered the panic in Whitehall especially, and the glee he’d felt reading about it in the papers. Talk of revolutions and carnage and biting the hand that fed, the poor finally rising up to take their rightful place. And then he’d thought, it’ll never last, and it hadn’t.

“I meant what do you want me for,” he clarified, because he couldn’t imagine what he’d done to draw their attention, or anybody’s.

The boy answered. “W-we need someone w-who can write.”

“Y’look like an educated man,” his grandfather added.

No, thought Thomas. I only worked in a great house, and had to mind my p’s and q’s. “I’m not,” Thomas said. “I’ve hardly any at all. What do you need a writer for?”

They had a magazine, apparently, or some kind of monthly that was on the verge of shutting down. Union membership was dropping, and the work was transient. Thomas wasn’t sure that a magazine could do much in the midst of an economic crisis. Or what he could.

However.

“I’m not a writer,” he said. “But I do know one.”

“It does pay,” Thomas said later, while Tom was trying to figure out why the pram wheel kept getting stuck and Thomas was holding it steady. “Not much, but they pass the hat around.”

“I’m not a member of the union, you do remember,” Tom said from where he was kneeling, his forehead creased in concentration.

“Neither am I.”

“Why not?” Tom asked.

“And give them money every time I get paid?”

“It’s not much, union dues,” Tom said. “They aren’t going to bankrupt you. Why not go to a meeting, see what they’re about?”

“I suppose,” Thomas said, slightly put out that Tom didn’t appreciate the opportunity he was giving him. “I’m still not a writer, am I?”

“Nether was I,” said Tom. He had fixed whatever problem the wheel was having and stood up, dusting off his knees. In the pram, Sybbie gurgled and grabbed at Thomas’ finger when he offered it to her. “I can’t say my style was much to write home about. I wanted to draw attention to what was being done to us, that’s all. Besides,” he said. “You’re a clever talker. Just put that on paper.”

“Am I?” Thomas asked, trying not to let on how pleased the compliment made him. He had a terrible suspicion he was doing a poor job of it.

“Yes,” said Tom said, giving him an impish smile. “Almost as good as an Irishman.”

So Thomas went. The meeting was much busier than he would have expected, what with the old man making it sound like they were on the brink of collapse. Which got him in the door, didn’t it? Clever of the old bastard. They were both here, him and his grandson, and according to the introductions he was given they were both called Roger. Old Rog and young Rog, heaven help us all.

“Knew you’d make it,” Roger Sr. said, looking for all the world like he’d accomplished something.

Thomas sat himself in a corner and looked around. There were a few familiar faces, ones he saw each day with taking particular note of. It occurred to him that he must have been the same for many of the people here, another anonymous shape in a crowd. It was so different than the servant’s hall, where nothing passed uncommented on. He hadn’t decided yet if he liked it or not. Though of course even at Downton he had been unknown in all the ways that mattered; by his very nature he had to be unknown.

Or, not entirely. Tom knew about him and hadn’t called up the authorities. He invited him over for the holidays and let him hold his daughter instead. Thomas should have tried striking up friendships with revolutionary Fenians years ago.

If they were friends. It was a nice thought, a warm and comforting thought, the kind he should be suspicious of because it had mislead him so often in the past. But what did it matter, if Thomas supposed so privately, in his own head? As long as he didn’t rely on it. He was allowed to have as rich and as foolish an inner life as anyone else.

There was a reading of some dry facts. The man who did it stood on his seat. A round of thank you for this and that, some budgeting. He would stay for a few minutes more but he couldn’t claim it was catching his attention. It had the feel of a town council meeting.

Tom would be disappointed, but he shouldn’t be. Not everyone could be like him. He had the power of belief. Men of his stripe — the kind who thought they could change the world, who thought the world _could_ change — always did. Once Thomas might have counted himself among them, but not any longer.

“I see there are some new faces in the crowd today,” the speaker at the front said. “And I’d like you to know: we aren’t usually so boring.”

A ripple of laughter went through the listeners. “I’d also like to point out some of these new faces, and to thank them for coming. You see, these ladies,” gesturing now to a small group of women, none of whom looked very sure of themselves, “are the beginning of the Bag Maker’s union.” There was a smattering of applause. “And I’d like us all here to give them a hand. Not one among us works as hard as our friends here.”

“Doing what?” some wit decided to call out. “Darning socks, like.”

One of the women, more of a girl really, turned towards him with a flaming red face and an expression of absolute rage. Thomas liked her immediately. “I’d like to see you say that to me in person, Ted Wilder,” she shouted. “I’d like to see you stand up and say it to the likes of Ma Bamber or Jeannie Mole. I knew your mother and she’d be ashamed of you right now!”

That got a big laugh, and even clapping. “Don’t let anyone tell you the Bag Maker’s Union can’t stand up for themselves,” the speaker said. “But I want us to stand up with them too. So do I get an aye from you, men? Will we turn out and support these women in any actions they may need to take?”

“Aye!” some called back, though not enough for his liking.

“I said do I hear an _aye_?”

“ _Aye_ ,” the men roared, and it sounded like the end of a football match, all stomping feet and whistles. Thomas ducked his head against the noise, a smile appearing on his face unbidden.

The meeting didn’t clear out immediately after it was ended. They were a friendly lot, here in this room. Clapping each other on the shoulder, inquiring after the wife and kids. Contributing to a couple of donations boxes, one for the Bag Maker’s Union and one for a comrade who had taken poorly. It seemed genuine, and reminded him of something he’d occasionally felt before, dancing with Daisy in the kitchen, touching the edge of the kind of life he was never going to have. The feeling of being approved of. He thought about it, and he wanted a cigarette, and he didn’t get out of his chair. There was an ache in his chest, a black nothing in his head. It was envy, and he didn’t know why he would resent people who had no more than he did and nothing that he didn’t, except for a small and hard-won place in the world.

Unless that O’Brien had been right about him, and he was only vanity and petty jealousies after all.

He intended to leave without being noticed, but Roger the elder caught him as he was going out the door. “Gone already?” he asked. “Some of us go out for a drink after, you might come along if you like.”

Thomas rounded on the old man, abruptly furious. “Why me?” he asked.

Roger’s forehead creased up more than it already was. “M’sorry?”

“Why did you want me to come here? To get involved in this?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because I don’t belong in there,” Thomas said.

The old man blinked. “Son,” he said, “who told you that?”

 

 

There was a light on in one window of Tom’s flat. The kitchen, which was to be expected, because he’d asked Thomas to stop by after and tell him how it went. Thomas knocked lightly, because even if Kieran wasn’t in bed the baby would be. Tom heard and answered right away.

“Cup of tea?” he asked, quietly, and Thomas nodded. He followed him into the kitchen and watched him put the kettle on and pull it off the burner just before it whistled. “So how was it?” he asked, stirring the sugar in.

“I’m not sure what I thought of it,” Thomas said, keeping his voice low. What else could he say? That he’d left sour and alone, that he didn’t know if he would go back? He took the teacup from Tom and let it warm his hands. The world was tilting towards spring, but the nights were still cold.

“Have you ever been before?” Tom asked, sitting down at the table across from Thomas. “Not for a union, I don’t mean, but any kind of a political meeting?”

“No. Why would I have been?”

“The way you used to talk sometimes,” Tom said, “I thought you might have.”

“It’s nice to know somebody was listening,” Thomas said, ruefully. “But that was all imagination, Tom. Imagination and the newspaper.”

“Nothing wrong with that. It’s got to come from somewhere, doesn’t it?”

And it had: from some part of Thomas that always wanted a change he never got. It would have been better for him if he could kill it off. Accept his lot like everyone else did. But his lot was worse than theirs, wasn’t it? They weren’t criminals for existing. He didn’t have the luxury of giving up.

“I never stayed in any place long enough to be attending meetings,” Thomas said. “Not until Downton. And can you imagine trying to unionize under old Carson? He’d have us all out on our ears in minutes.”

“I can’t say I was very fond of him,” Tom said. “Though I did try to be polite.” Unlike some people, the implication seemed to be, and Thomas smirked.

“Can’t say he was fond of you,” he said. “I never saw him so angry as when you married Sybil. Thought the old codger might take a heart attack right then and there. Not that I would have minded.”

“I almost feel like I should scold you,” Tom said, smiling. “But I won’t. What did you do to him, anyway? He always had it in for you personally.”

Stole wine, Thomas thought. Was insubordinate. Gossiped too much for his liking. Was a sexual deviant. Wanted something else, something better, and I wasn’t afraid to say so. “I was myself,” he said. He took a sip of his tea. “What was it like? Being above stairs, when you were?”

Tom took a minute to answer. “Like a stone in my shoe,” he said. “I knew I didn’t belong there, and I could feel it, all the time. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m very grateful that they took me in when they did. And I’m fond of the girls and Matthew. But after Sybil,” he shook his head. “I couldn’t stay. I didn’t want my daughter to grow up in the house of a man who looked down on me, and who I was and what I did. Who couldn’t understand it.”

“Still not calling him dear old Dad, I see.”

Tom laughed, loudly, in a beautifully helpless way. It was a maddenly attractive sound, so much so that Thomas wanted to hear it again, so he forced himself to look away. Tom glanced over his shoulder in guilt at the cracked-open door of his brother’s room, and sure enough Kieran’s voice floated out from the darkness.

“Shut your mouths, both of you. Go to bed.”

“I should leave,” Thomas said. “We’ll wake Sybbie next.”

“Finish your tea first,” Tom said. “Besides, I wanted to tell you about an idea I had. You can let me know what you think of it.” He leaned forward in his chair. “I know I can’t be in Ireland right now. I can’t risk Sybbie, I can’t help with the war. Not that way. But I want to do something while I’m here.”

“Fundraising?”

“So many of us are already sending money back,” he said. “And it isn’t enough.” He stopped, perhaps in reaction to the expression on Thomas’ face. “I’m not talking about anything criminal.”

“No?”

“ _No_ ,” said Tom. “I’m talking about politics. Look, we make up a big portion of this city. Maybe a third of it. But we’re not recognizing that — we aren’t recognizing the potential power of the Irish in _England_. But what if we really organized? What if we put pressure on the government as a whole? Not the Liberals anymore, they don’t give a damn anymore if they ever did — but what if we could connect with Labour somehow? There’s a lot of Irish born in Liverpool, too. They could take this city if they paid any attention to us at all. Maybe the country. And if that doesn’t work,” he shrugged. “A general strike might do the trick. If all of us stopped working at once, they’d _have_ to listen.”

He looked lit up from inside, carried away by his own ideas. Like the Tom of old. Thomas realised abruptly that this was something he needed, a source of energy for him, the way electricity ran through a wire.

And if course it would take him away, eventually. He would follow a path — some better, higher path — that Thomas couldn’t. But Thomas would be fine. He was used to being left behind.

“I think you should do it,” he said.

 

 

Thomas went home feeling emptied out and exhausted, but too jittery to sleep. He made another try at the watch to calm his mind, and drifted off with the parts spread out before him. His dreams were unsettled. He and Tom were in a crowd of women, marching along, waving blood red banners towards the sky.

 

 

On the day that his wife died and his daughter was born, Tom told his brother he wasn’t coming into work. “I’m going to take her to the park,” he said. “Get some sunshine on both our skins.”

There was no birthday party, but there was fresh green grass on the rolling lawns and groves of trees that reminded him a bit of the manicured grounds at Downton. He took her to see the birds in the aviary and sat by the water, holding her close. One year in their lives was gone, one year distant from that terrible night, and that meant one year distant from Sybil herself. The pain was still there, but it wasn’t as raw. There were times when he felt guilty for that, but he knew he couldn’t carry it around with him forever because then Sybbie would too. Children always picked up on so much more than their parents knew.

So he took her to the park, and he showed her the beauty around them. He brought her home with a little flower tucked behind her ear and there was a gift waiting for her there, wrapped in newspaper. “Thomas came by looking for you,” Kieran said. “He left that.”

Tom unwrapped it for her. It was a velveteen elephant with a pink saddle, and she slept with it that night and for many nights after.

 

 

Thomas had come over to use the typewriter, but he was watching Sybbie instead, who was sitting on the kitchen floor, holding her elephant by the trunk and slamming it against the tile with gusto.

“That means she likes it,” Tom told him.

“If you say so,” Thomas said, dubious. It was the first time they’d been alone together in weeks — except for Sybbie, of course — and Tom was enjoying his undivided attention. They’d both been very busy, meeting primarily at the pub for a quick beer. Tom’s society was starting to gather members, though they were still debating the name. Thomas was helping the union put together a newsletter, and for all his complaining he’d turned out to be good at it. He’d even asked to borrow some of Tom’s political books, borderline shamefaced, like they were the kind of dirty thing the boys used to pass around during breaks at school.

Tom was very careful not to make fun of him, even if he wanted to.

It was quiet in the flat, Kieran gone out with his mates. There was a cooling cup of tea at Tom’s elbow and an ashtray at Thomas’ and not much happening but the click of the keys. It was peaceful, and Tom experienced an uncomplicated happiness that was rare for him these days.

“I can read that over if you like,” he offered. “When you’re done with it.”

Thomas smiled. “And mark it over with notes in the margins? You can, I’m not that sensitive.”

“I wouldn’t, I’m not your schoolmaster. But I could be a second pair of eyes.”

“I need to get a typewriter of my own. I might learn to use it properly, and I won’t have to be over here so often, bothering you.” Thomas was no typist; he operated the machine with endearing clumsiness, a slow and confused operation that resulted in a lot of correction and retyping. But he was getting better.

“You’re not,” Tom said. “I like having you here.”

Thomas stopped, his fingers still on the keys. He met Tom’s eyes for a brief and intense moment, with a kind of surprised need in his face that Tom didn’t associate with him. It was impossible to look away from and lasted only a second. It also seemed to go on much longer. Somehow, Tom had caused that expression to manifest and it made his heart speed up in his chest. He wanted to see it again.

“Imagine that,” Thomas said, and started typing again.

Tom did the washing up after he left, gave Sybbie a bath and tried to go to sleep himself. He felt fitful and strange and had an inexplicable craving for a cigarette. When his brother came home, pissed drunk and full of cheerful noise, it was almost a relief.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I have been forced to accept that this story cannot be wrapped up in this chapter so it will ultimately be four chapters long instead of three. Please enjoy this one as we head slowly but surely towards the finish line.

 

 

 

Thomas ducked under Tom’s stairs for a second to shake off the rain, which was running into his eyes and had plastered his hair to his forehead. It had been dry when he left, but it was also spring and he should have taken an umbrella with him. He rubbed his sleeve over his face, but it was wet, too. He would have to stay long enough to dry off, he thought, and just as he was about to leave his temporary shelter the door above him opened. Thomas looked up through the slats of the steps and saw a woman’s shoes emerge. They were expensive shoes, not ones that belonged to the girl who watched Sybbie during the day, and Thomas barely had time to wonder who that might be before he heard the cut-glass voice of Lady Mary Crawley ring out.

“This blasted rain,” she said. “And me in a silk dress.”

“I told you not to wear it,” Lady Grantham replied, amused. “Tom isn’t impressed by your silks.”

Thomas reeled and then sprang into action, so vigorously he almost slipped. He got around the corner quick enough that they didn’t see and pressed himself flat to the wall, as if that was going to help. The car started up, and he could hear tires on gravel. Still, he waited. His heart ran like a rabbit’s.

Stupid, he thought, to forget the connection that Tom had with these people. But he’d never expected them to turn up here, in Liverpool, a place as incompatible with the likes of them as anything could be. Had they sat for tea in Tom’s flat? Commented on the decor? Asked to see the garage?

Thomas was wet and cold and miserable, but worst of all he was embarrassed. He hated feeling small or powerless. The life he was building here wasn’t a bad one, and he was working hard for it. Some of the men at the union even respected him, the way people rarely ever had. Perhaps there was a reason for that. Thomas didn’t fool himself into thinking he was a respectable man. But he’d never wanted to be — he wanted peace and he wanted stability and he wanted to claim his place in the world. He could do that — he _was_ doing that, bit by bit, eking out something from nothing just like he always said he would. There was no reason for him to be ashamed. And yet he knew he couldn’t have walked past Mary and Cora on those stairs, couldn’t have nodded his head and smiled and looked them in the eye. Not any more than he could have faced Carson, or even thought about him, without the world _foul_ drenching his mind with its stench.

He wondered if he would ever stop feeling like he was about to be caught out at any moment. But it wasn’t only his fear or his shame that kept him frozen in place; it was Tom, he realized. It was that he was worried about Tom, about what could happen to him or to Sybbie if Thomas’ reputation, so to speak, preceded itself. Thomas was beyond the Crawley’s reach. Tom wasn’t.

Couldn’t have married a poor woman, could he?

Times like this he always remembered the old man, the contemptuous way he used to look at Thomas when he caught him being soft. He hated himself for that, too.

There were only two places he could go from here: home, or up the stairs. Once he would have gone home and likely spent the rest of the afternoon sulking. And what good would it have done him? He would dry off at Tom’s, at least, and he would keep his moment of weakness to himself.

“Here’s a cat caught out in the rain,” said Tom when he opened the door, pulling Thomas in by the arm. “Jesus, you’re soaked through. How long were you out there?”

“Ran into an old friend on the road,” Thomas said, and Tom gave him a look that was too curious, so he turned away towards the fireplace. It was a small one, but a small fire still gave off heat, and he crouched before it with his hands out. He was shivering. How odd that he was shivering now when he hadn’t been outside.

“Thomas.”

He looked up.

“You’ll catch your death,” Tom said. He nodded towards the bedroom. “Go get changed.”

“Into what?” Thomas asked, stupidly.

“Something of mine,” Tom said. “Or Kieran’s. I don’t care, but you can’t stay in the wet like that.”

“He’d care.”

Tom’s eyebrows drew together. “Do you think my brother has a problem with you?” he asked. “He doesn’t. He likes you just fine. If he did you’d know about it, trust me. He’s not a subtle man.”

“I don’t think Kieran hates me.”

“Then what happened? Don’t lie and say nothing.”

“It’s not —” Thomas peered back into the fire until spots welled up in front of his eyes. “I saw your _in-laws_ , alright?” He didn’t know why he said it at all, only that what was rising in him was hateful and ugly and it was the same thing that made him ruin the good things he had, whenever he was lucky enough to get them. “And then I hid behind the garage like a fucking rat. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

There was a ringing silence. Thomas refused to look away from the fire. Tom was going to tell him to leave and to not come back. He heard him walk away.

And then he came back, only to throw a towel over his head and start scrubbing at Thomas’ hair until Thomas slapped his hands away.

“Well,” he said, and he was smiling, “if _you_ won’t do it. Now go change, like I said.”

Thomas did, shamefaced. His head was spinning, the way it always did when something happened that he couldn’t predict. And he couldn’t predict Tom, that much was clear. He took the opportunity of being alone in his bedroom to snoop a little, banking on the familiar activity to calm him down. Tom’s room was small and mildly untidy, with a stack of books on the nightstand. The one on top was by somebody called Emma Goldman, and it was about anarchy — did Tom ever read anything that wasn’t a political treatise? Thomas would have to bring him some Verne or some Stevenson or even Wilde.

There was a folded shirt at the foot of Tom’s bed, an old one that was slightly frayed at the ends of the sleeves. Thomas picked it up and stripped out of his own.

The door opened, and Thomas looked back over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Tom said. “I didn’t know you were — here’s another towel, if you need it.” He set it on the dresser and left.

He was at the kitchen table when Thomas came back out and had hung his coat up to dry by the fire. “Sybbie?” Thomas asked.

“In bed,” Tom told him. “She was tired from all the excitement this afternoon.”

Thomas looked down at his feet. He wasn’t much for blushing, but he could feel his face heating up. “I don’t know what came over me,” he said.

“I do,” said Tom. He shrugged when Thomas met his eyes. “You were scared. I know you’d rather die than admit it but there’s no shame in being afraid.”

Thomas almost laughed. No shame in it. “How can you know?” he said. “You never are.”

“Yes, I am,” Tom said. “I am all the time.” He stood up, passing Thomas and squeezing his shoulder as he did so. “Go sit,” he said. “I’ll pour you a drink. It’ll warm you up.”

Thomas did as requested, but he wasn’t thinking about the drink. He was thinking about Tom’s hand on his shoulder, and that it had warmed him more than any whiskey could. He was thinking about how casually Tom touched him when they were together and he was wishing, unreasonably, that he would stop.

 

 

It had been three days, and Tom had given up expecting that he would stop thinking about it: the pale slope of Thomas’ shoulders in the low light of his room. What he was trying to work out was why he _couldn’t_ stop thinking about it, and why he felt such a guilty little thrill when he did.

He’d seen men undressed before, so it couldn’t be that. Was it because Thomas was normally so buttoned up? Did he feel like he’d discovered a secret? But, Tom thought, he’d never cared about secrets; that was Thomas’ own game. He’d always preferred to get everything out in the open air.

He was aware of Thomas in a physical way he hadn’t been before. How close he stood, or didn’t. It made him uncomfortable but it also made him feel alive. Like electricity without pain. He didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him but he wasn’t about to let Thomas catch on.

“You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said for the last five minutes,” Thomas complained, eyes narrowing, and Tom knew that he was right, and he realized with absolute horror that it was because he’d been watching Thomas’ _mouth move_.

He made some excuse. What would Thomas have thought, if he’d noticed? Would he be flattered? No, he wouldn’t, he’d think the worst of it, that Tom was laughing at him. He always did, though Tom wouldn’t have hurt him for the world. And maybe that was something he couldn’t change about Thomas, but he wasn’t going to make it worse, either. Contrary to what some people thought he _was_ capable of being responsible.

It was just that Thomas was the only person he’d ever have asked about this. He didn’t know any other men who —

Were attracted to other men.

If that’s what it was. If it wasn’t desperation, or loneliness, or a trick his mind was playing on him, confusing the platonic for the romantic. Trying to fill the void that Sybil left. Except he didn’t feel desperate or lonely anymore, and that was because of Thomas.

His brother caught him brooding about it. Late one night, reading by candlelight in the kitchen. Or pretending that he was. What he was actually doing was rifling through his old memories, trying to remember if he’d ever felt the way he did now about a man he’d known, a boy he’d grown up with. He wasn’t sure. He’d had some intense friendships. Had he loved them? Had he wanted them? Would he _know_ if he had? He couldn’t find an obvious path from then to now. He’d loved Sybil, and he’d loved women, but was he making the easy choice when he assumed that was all he was capable of?

Maybe he was a coward after all.

Kieran started when he saw him at the table. “Don’t you sleep?” he asked.

“Don’t you?”

“You know I’m a night owl,” Kieran said. “But you never were.”

Tom shrugged. “Things change,” he said. And so do I, he thought.

Kieran didn’t reply at first. He sat across from Tom, and he frowned. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“The one that means you’re going to do something mad,” he said. “The one that scares me more than it scares our Mam.”

 

 

“Why don’t you pull the guts out of it and start over?” Tom asked. “If it’s so impossible to fix?”

Thomas looked up with an almost smile, an amused glance that he often cast in Tom’s direction. “That would be your solution, wouldn’t it? Pull everything down and start over. Have a little patience, Tom.”

“Well,” Tom said. “My way gets results, doesn’t it?”

“Not for a watch, it doesn’t.” Thomas’ attention was on the bits and bobs in front of him again, scattered across the table. He’d bought one, presumably because Tom kept coming over and they needed somewhere to sit. “It wouldn’t be the same if I changed it.”

“Might be better.”

“It was my Grandad’s.”

“Oh,” Tom said. And now he felt terrible. “You were close?”

“You ask an awful lot of questions, don’t you?”

“Sometimes,” Tom said. “Sometimes you even answer them.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.” Thomas said, putting his — was it a screwdriver? Tom didn’t know the term — down. “We weren’t close. I never knew him.”

“The one who put your father in an orphanage, then.”

“Yes,” said Thomas. His face had gone flat and cold, his hands curled into loose fists. It could have been from anger or fear, except that Tom was beginning to see that for him they were one and the same. “And?”

Tom thought about it. “Fuck him, then,” he said.

Thomas laughed like it had been shocked out of him. It was a cliche to think so, but it really did change his whole face. “This must be very dull for you. You don’t give a damn about clockwork.”

“It’s not,” said Tom, because it hadn’t been, though not for any reason Thomas was likely to guess. Thomas had fine hands, suited for delicate work, and it was a pleasure to watch him at it. So no, he hadn’t been bored.

Thomas pushed his chair back from the table. “It’s a beautiful day,” he declared. “We should go for a walk.”

They went down by the water, because Thomas wasn’t far from it. It _was_ beautiful, the sun lighting it up like a carpet of diamonds, and they sat on the dock with their legs dangling over the edge and watched the boats pass by. Tom for once wasn’t thinking about anything else, not his plans or his family or his politics or his worries. When he glanced over at Thomas he thought he might feel the same, though he could be hard to read at times. “You were right,” he said. “We shouldn’t be cooped up on a day like this.” When he got back home he was going to take Sybbie to the park again. She liked the ducks.

“I always am,” Thomas said with a smirk, but there was no malice in it. His eyes looked startling, bright in the reflected sunlight.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“The two of us,” Tom said. “Sitting here.”

“Don’t get soppy.”

Tom smiled, helplessly, and if that was going to be his reaction to Thomas insulting him then he really was in trouble. “Alright,” he said. “I won’t. But don’t you wish we could have been friends back then, if we get along so well now? Seems a missed opportunity.”

“No.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “No?”

“No,” said Thomas, firmly. “The past doesn’t matter, don’t you see? It doesn’t exist. It’s gone, Tom. The future is the only thing that’s real. It’s all I care about.”

“Interesting theory,” Tom said. I wonder if you really believe in it, he thought.

 

 

Tom took the stairs up to Thomas’ flat as quickly as he could. He banged on the door with the flat of his hand until it was opened. Thomas had clearly been pulled from sleep; he was in his vest and pants, and there was a mark from the pillow on his cheek. Tom had an urge to reach out and touch it.

Thomas looked about ready to growl at him, but nothing could have dented Tom’s mood today. “It’s not even light out yet!” he hissed, passing a hand over his face. “I thought the building was on fire!”

“Read this,” said Tom, by way of explanation, slapping the newspaper against his chest.

Thomas sighed and wandered away from the door, unfolding the paper. He sat on the edge of the bed. Tom followed him, but didn’t take his usual place at the table. He couldn’t possibly sit still, so he leaned back against the wall and watched Thomas scan the paper. His heart felt like it was doing cartwheels in his chest. “Well?” he said.

“Tom, let me read.”

“I’ll light you a candle,” Tom said, mostly to have something to do.

Thomas’ face didn’t change as he read the news, though that might have been because he knew he was being watched closely. He folded the paper and set it aside. “So,” he said. “A ceasefire.”

“Yes,” Tom said. “People have been saying it was going to happen, and I wanted it — but I’m not sure I thought I’d ever get it.”

“The war is over.”

“Maybe,” said Tom. “Or maybe not, it could be too soon to tell. But — they’ve admitted it was a war, not some peasant uprising that can be stamped out. And sooner or later they’re going to have to admit that we’re a country, too. I don’t think Britain can hold on much longer. We’ve slipped from their grasp.”

Thomas got up and then knelt beside the bed. He pulled the bottle out from under it, the one they drank from the first time Tom had been here. He smiled. “I said I was saving it for a special occasion, didn’t I?”

Tom laughed and got the glasses. He felt so light on his feet he might have floated. It was a dangerous sort of mood, the kind in which he felt like he could do anything. He sat next to Thomas on the bed, aware of the strange intimacy of the whole thing, what it would look like if anyone could have glanced in the window. But they were three floors up, and no one could have.

“I can’t believe it’s really happening,” he said. “I was sure it would, and yet I never thought I’d see it — does that make any sense?”

“The substance of things hoped for,” Thomas said, passed Tom his glass and raised his own. “To the dying of the empire.”

Tom returned the gesture. “To the only Englishman I know who would say that.”

Thomas gave him one of his funny looks, like he was trying to work out what Tom meant even though all he ever meant was exactly what he’d said. “So little Lady Sybbie will grow up proper Irish after all. Congratulations.”

“What’d you mean?”

“You’ll go back, of course. Why wouldn’t you?”

Go back. He hadn’t thought about it, so swept away by the idea of Ireland being independent — no, not the idea, the fact, because he was sure it was going to happen — that he had almost forgotten he was exiled in the first place. He could go back. They’d forgive him, he thought. What would it matter, one house-burning in the name of Ireland, in their brave new world? He could go see his Ma. Could introduce her to her granddaughter. Could show Sybbie where he’d grown up.

“I bet I could,” he said. “Eventually. Though there’s no guarantee that I’d be able to stay. I came out here for work the first time, after all. I have a job in Liverpool.”

Thomas drained his whiskey and got up. He was looking for his pack, which turned out to be in his jacket pocket. “I’m sure you’ll find something.”

“What if I do?” Tom asked. “Would you miss me?”

Thomas turned around. The cigarettes were in his hand, dangling as if forgotten. “What?” he asked, sharply.

Tom was in dangerous waters, he knew. He also couldn’t make himself get out of them. “Would you miss me?” he asked, any urge he had to make it sound like a joke dying as he said the words.

Faced with answering the question honestly, Thomas floundered. “I— what do you mean?” he asked. He tapped a cigarette out into his palm and put it in his mouth.

“You heard what I said,” Tom said, refusing to take pity on him. He hated it, after all.

Thomas wandered over in a remarkable aimless fashion, given the smallness of the room. He sat next to Tom, this time a few steps away. “I suppose,” he said, around the cigarette.

“You suppose?”

“I—” Thomas turned towards him, a jerky movement that wasn’t much like him, except for how it was. His hair was falling into his eyes; had been, ever since Tom had walked through the door. “Yes. Is that what you want? I would. Jesus Christ, Tom. What are you getting out of this? Are you tormenting me for fun?”

“I’m not making fun of you.You must know by now that I never am. All I wanted was the truth.”

“What truth?” Thomas asked. “That I’ll miss you? That I resent being left alone in this shite goddamned room? There, now you have it.”

Tom smiled. It was demented of him; he couldn’t help it. “You don’t want me going.”

“No,” Thomas said. “You’re wrong. I’m happy for you. I _am_ ,” he said, letting out a frustrated breath.

Tom reached out. He took the cigarette from between Thomas’ damably soft-looking lips and threw it on the floor. Thomas didn’t stop him. If anything he seemed hypnotized; leaning forward, unable to break his gaze or retreat into sarcasm. Tom felt tender and thrilled and horribly powerful, all at once. “Liar,” he said, and kissed him.

For a long and awful second Thomas was completely still against him, and Tom thought he’d gotten it all wrong. Then a tremor went through him, as if something were about to break, and he returned Tom’s kiss with such fervor that he pushed him backwards. It was hungry and almost biting and Tom panted against his mouth, a small desperate sound pushed out of him. And then Thomas moaned, actually _moaned_ , and climbed on top of him, bearing him down onto the bed. Jesus, it was wonderful. It had been more than a year since anyone touched him in any way that was more than casual. Tom bucked up against his weight and slid his hands into Thomas’ hair, cupping his skull and keeping him close. And then, suddenly, it stopped. Thomas pulled away, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “Wait,” he said.

“Why?” Tom asked, sitting up, confused and still dizzy with want. “What’s wrong?”

“Tom,” he said, with a visible — and failed — attempt to control the emotion in his voice. “Have you _thought_ about this? About any of it?”

“Lately I’ve thought about nothing else.”

“God,” said Thomas, desire and irritation moving over his face in equal measure. “I meant the consequences.”

Tom sighed. “I know everyone thinks I can’t control myself,” he said, “but of course I have. I know it would change things. I know it’s dangerous. But I’m not afraid of danger, am I?”

“Maybe you should be,” Thomas said. “You have a dau—-”

“Don’t,” said Tom, sharply. “Don’t use her against me like that, Thomas. Don’t make her an excuse. I won’t let you.”

Thomas swallowed. He looked very thrown, and Tom felt a bit cruel, but then he went on. “Alright,” he said. “Then I won’t. But you can understand why I wouldn’t want to be the one to ruin your life, can’t you? I’ve done it enough times to my own. I want —” His face twisted, and he went quiet. “I’m trying to do the right thing for once, don’t you see?”

He was, and it no longer seemed like a miracle to Tom that he would. He knew better now. He also knew that Thomas must have cared deeply for him to bother. Deep in Tom’s chest a warm and painful ache set in.

“I appreciate it,” Tom said. “But you don’t get to make that decision for me. Nobody does. If you want to say no for reasons of your own I can’t stop you. I can only say that doing it for me isn’t fair because I never asked you for it.”

Thomas looked away from him, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Stubborn as an ox as usual. What is fair, in this rotten world.”

“Nothing,” Tom said. “But we should make it so.”

They sat quietly together for a moment, pressed together at the side. Thomas didn’t try and put any more space between them.

“At least you didn’t slap me,” Tom ventured.

“I might have done,” Thomas said. “Coming at me like that out of nowhere.”

Tom nudged him with his knee. “Can I do it again?”

“No,” said Thomas. “Not now. I need you to give yourself a day before you come to any decision about this.”

“I have made my decision.”

“I’m serious,” said Thomas. “Sleep on it. A day to think it all over, to see if those consequences are still worth it to you. Give yourself a day, and I won’t argue with you. Come back when you’re less excited, and I can be sure you mean it.”

And it wasn’t some fantasia built up by too many good things happening at once, he meant. Tom might have been insulted, but he wasn’t. It was only how Thomas thought about things, that everything had to be planned out or it would fail. “Is that what you need?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I can give you that,” Tom said. “Can I ask for something as well?”

“If you must.”

“A goodbye kiss.”

“You are the most insufferable man alive.”

“Is that no?”

Thomas shook his head, and he was trying not to smile again. Tom felt it against his lips when he kissed him for the second time. It was as good as the first.

 

 

Thomas spent the next day in a daze, and by quitting time he was sure he was going to fall apart at the seams. At noon he had decided that Tom wouldn’t come after all, that he would have thought better of it, that he would have sensibly changed his mind. By mid-afternoon he had remembered that Tom never did a sensible thing in his life and so he _would_ come, but it would all end in disaster somehow all the same. He would hate anything they did together, if they did anything at all, and he would hate Thomas by extension. By the time the men were rolling down their sleeves and slipping into a pub for an evening beer, he didn’t know what to think. He had an inexplicable urge to not go home at all.

But he did, of course. He did knowing that he might well be throwing a grenade into his own life; that if it had never worked out before there was no reason to believe it would now, that he had no guarantee he wouldn’t destroy his own tentative happiness in the bargain. If he was better at saying no to something he wanted —

— except he wasn’t. Thomas was no monk, no ascetic. He had no love for the barren world. He took what he could get because he knew what it was like to do without and he knew that he would inevitably do without again.

And he could have this, couldn’t he? For a little while, at least.

He took a quick bath when he got back to his flat. Working in the heat always made him a sweaty mess. And then he waited.

Thomas startled when the knock at the door came. He tried not to look too eager when he let Tom inside, but it felt absurd to go through the usual motions of this: making small talk, offering him a drink or a cup of tea. So he didn’t; he went straight to the table and pulled out a chair. The bed wasn’t neutral territory, not any longer.

Tom looked as unsure as he felt, which was both a relief and a torment. He had his hat bunched up in one fist and gave Thomas a thin smile. What if he’d changed his mind, after all?

“We can call the whole thing off if you like,” Thomas said, before Tom could speak. “I won’t hold it against you.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t like,” he said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Have you ever been with a man before?”

“No. Never.”

“Then why now?” Thomas asked. “Why me?”

“I suppose it’s,” Tom said, and then stopped. He started over. “ _Because_ it’s you.”

Thomas’ heart was pounding. Sod it, he thought, and threw caution to the wind. He crossed the room and took Tom’s face in his hands and kissed him. Tom dropped his hat and kissed him back, his hands sliding around to the small of Thomas’ back. His mouth opened and his eyes slowly closed. Thomas nipped at his lower lip and gloried in the sound it produced.

Tom was dazed and flushed pink when they parted; Thomas wanted to see how far down it went. But he was the one who reached out to brush Thomas’ hair back, who said to him tenderly, “See? It’ll be alright.”

Something in Thomas snapped, and he manhandled Tom onto the bed. He kissed him until his lips tingled and he had to break away to breathe. Tom touched Thomas’ mouth with the tips of his fingers and Thomas took his hand and kissed his knuckles, one by one.

“God,” Tom said. He cupped the side of Thomas’ face. Thomas smiled at him, and sucked two of his fingers into his mouth.

That did it; they fell back against the mattress, pulling at buttons and belts. Stripped to their waists, Thomas straddled him, dragging a hand down his side. He kissed his collarbones and mouthed his way down, licking across his nipple and biting down.

Tom cursed and dragged him back up by his hair, setting off sparks of pain across his scalp that made Thomas grind down. “You,” Tom said, incoherently, gripping his hips and pushing up. They could have finished just like this, rubbing together and racing towards a messy, frantic climax. But Tom liked his mouth, and so Thomas was going to give him it.

He sat up to take off his trousers and his pants. When Tom tried to follow him he pushed him back down. “No,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

With both of them naked, he sprawled between Tom’s legs and waited for him to catch on. It didn’t take long. “Oh,” Tom said, his eyes going wide. His hand settled tentatively on Thomas’ shoulder as if granting permission, and there was an excited catch in his voice.

“Oh,” said Thomas, and licked him from root to tip. He pressed the flat of his tongue to the head of Tom’s cock, tasting the salt of him, and squeezed the base. Showing off. A glance up showed he had Tom’s undivided attention. He took full advantage, let his eyes close, and fed the length of Tom’s prick into his mouth.

He’d always enjoyed this, the hot pressure of a man’s cock against his tongue, pushing against the back of his throat. Even when it was a little rough, leaving him sore and hoarse. Liked it the other way round, too, cupping a man’s head in his hands, sliding in as deep as he could go. He liked it hard and fast on his knees or lying lazily in bed, drawing out the pleasure as long as he could.

And draw it out he would. He was going to make it good for Tom, the kind of good he’d never forget. No matter how much distance or time there was between them.

He swallowed wetly around his length and pulled back, only to suck him down again. His lips met his fist, and just as Tom’s thighs started to tighten up he pulled off entirely and licked him again, rubbed the pad of thumb in slow maddening circles against the sensitive spot under the head.

“You,” Tom said, his voice trembling. His shoulders had dropped back against the pillow and he was looking blindly at the ceiling.

“What?” Thomas asked, languidly, pumping his fist up and down hard enough to make Tom gasp and twitch.

Tom groaned. It sounded almost pained, and Thomas loved it, he wanted to hear it again and again. “You’re a proper minx, you are.”

“I should hope so,” Thomas said, and let Tom push back into his mouth. He wasn’t moving much, tiny polite jerks of his hips, but Thomas reveled in it. He took Tom’s hand and put it in his hair and started sucking in earnest, bobbing his head, dragging his tongue against the underside on every upstroke. It was getting wet as hell, all down his chin, from him or Tom or both of them. Thomas was hard against the bedsheets, which were no kind of friction at all, but it was a good kind of torture. The sounds they made together were appalling. All choked down whimpers and the slap of flesh and the whine of his breath through his nose and Thomas thought yes, fuck me, _please_ keep fucking me.

Tom was a noisy lay, curses and moans and sweet half finished compliments spilling from his lips. He called Thomas lovely and his darling and he fucked his mouth open like he was going to die if he didn’t. Exactly like he was going to die, like it was being ripped from him. “I can’t,” he said. “Thomas, I can’t _stop_ —” When he came he did the most wonderful thing, the most unexpected thing, and held Thomas in place with strong implacable hands, made him take every hot spurt down his throat. Thomas shook and he saw stars and he almost came himself, his hips thrusting uselessly against the bed.

He rolled away, panting, so aroused he was dizzy. Tom’s hand was still in his hair, lightly running through it. When Thomas roused himself enough to look over, Tom looked like he’d fallen apart entirely; shocked by how much he’d liked it. Thomas was familiar with the syndrome.

“Was that all right?” Tom asked, tentatively.

“It was perfect,” Thomas said.

“What can I do for you?”

Thomas knew what he wanted. Still, he hesitated. “I’d like you to kiss me,” he said, after a minute.

Tom smiled. “Come here,” he said, softly, and then pulled Thomas up into his arms. They kissed, slowly and without purpose. Too much without purpose — Thomas was getting desperate, rubbing himself against Tom’s hip, his lip between his teeth.

“What next?” Tom asked. “Anything you want.”

God. Thomas tucked his head into the crook of Tom’s neck. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been touched so gently, or offered so much. “Your hands,” he said. “Give me your hands.” He couldn’t wait another second so he linked his own fingers with Tom’s, wrapping both around himself. Using Tom’s hand to get himself off.

Tom followed his movements, curling his fingers around his cock and squeezing. Long, firm strokes that made him ache in the best way. Thomas could feel himself start to come, on the painful edge of it, _so_ close. But it was what Tom said that sent him careening over.

“I could use my mouth,” he said. “I’d like you to teach me.”

Thomas cried out, an animal sound he might have had the grace to be embarrassed about if he’d been able to think straight. As it was his mind had gone fuzzy and white. He needed this. God, he _needed_ it. He spilled over their joined fingers and shivered his way through it, held close and held together by Tom, who kept going through the aftershocks, kept going until Thomas nudged him away, sore and twitching from over-stimulation.

It was a good job he was lying down. He felt weak in the knees, and like he could have fallen asleep right there. He almost couldn’t believe any of it had actually happened, except Tom was right there next to him, and he wasn’t running away. Some men did. Some got violent afterwards, blaming whoever they were with for their inability to stay away from their own desires. That had never happened to Thomas, though he did once have a man panic so dramatically in the post-coital period that he leapt from the bed, tripped over the bedsheets and fell flat on his face. Thomas had laughed at him.

Tom didn’t appear to be anything except content, but Thomas thought that he should check in with him all the same. It was all so new to him.

“Alright?” he asked, trailing his fingers up the side of Tom’s leg.

“More than alright,” Tom said. “I might fall asleep right here. Do you mind if I do?”

“Of course not,” Thomas said. “I don’t throw men out of my bed after I invite them into it.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Tom said. “You can be very mercurial, you know.”

“What?” Thomas asked, frowning. “I’m not—-”

“I’m kidding,” Tom said. “It was a joke.” He kissed him to prove it, and it was nice, just simply nice and good, the way very few things in Thomas’ life had ever been. It made him nervous. He wasn’t used to affection he didn’t have to earn, somehow, and he wondered what the ultimate price for this would be. For lying comfortably next to a lover who didn’t want anything more from him than his company.

He made himself stop thinking about it, or he tried. He wasn’t going to ruin this; he wasn’t going to expect more of them than they could ever be. They weren’t going to be running off into the sunset together. Tom had a whole life outside of him, one that might take him out of England completely one day, and Thomas was fine with that. He was. He was going to enjoy himself for once, and not try to predict the future before it came.

“Go to sleep,” Thomas said. “I’ll wake you before it gets too late.” Because Tom couldn’t possibly stay the night; he had a daughter, he had a brother, he had a family that would notice if he was gone. That was the compromise. In the grand scheme of things, it was a small one.

Tom did sleep, and Thomas didn’t. He couldn’t, whether it was from excitement or nerves. He stared at the ceiling and listened to Tom’s breathing as the minutes ticked past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
